Stability of strong electromagnetic waves in overdense plasmas

Abstract

We consider the stability against small perturbations of a class of exact wave solutions of the equations that describe an unmagnetized relativistic cold electron plasma. The main feature of these nonlinear waves is a transverse circularly polarized electric field with periodic amplitude modulation in the longitudinal direction. Floquet's theory of linear differential equations with periodic coefficients is used to solve the perturbation equations and obtain the instability growth rates.